The British public is not anti-German at present but it would be opposed to any country which showed the intention of breaking the peace. A great many people in England think that French rigidity has helped Hitler's rise. People in England are neither pro-French nor anti-German. If they were finally convinced that Germany intended to break the peace, they would align themselves accordingly.

I have to laugh when the English claim they are such a wonderful nation. Everyone knows that Englishmen are really Germans, that the English kings were German, and that in Russia the emperors were either of German origin or received their education in Germany.

Half a century ago, the first feeling of all Englishmen was for England. Now, the sympathies of a powerful party are instinctively given to whatever is against England. It may be Boers or Baboos, or Russians or Affghans, or only French speculators—the treatment these all receive in their controversies with England is the same: whatever else my fail them, they can always count on the sympathies of the political party from whom during the last half century the rulers of England have been mainly chosen. .. . It is striking, though by no means a solitary indication of how low, in the present temper of English politics, our sympathy with our own countrymen has fallen. Of course, we shall be told that a conscience of exalted sensibility, which is the special attribute of the Liberal party, has enabled them to discover, what English statesmen had never discovered before, that the cause to which our countrymen are opposed is generally the just one. ... For ourselves, we are rather disposed to think that patriotism has become in some breasts so very reasonable an emotion, because it is ceasing to be an emotion at all; and that these superior scruples, to which our fathers were insensible, and which always make the balance of justice lean to the side of abandoning either our territory or our countrymen, indicate that the national impulses which used to make Englishmen cling together in face of every external trouble are beginning to disappear.

Never will I own as my friend him who is not a friend of the people of England. I will never become a Subject or a Citizen in any other state, and will always be a foreigner in every country but England. ... [M]y beloved Countrymen, be you well assured, that the last beatings of that heart will be, love for the people, for the happiness and the renown of England; and hatred of their corrupt, hypocritical, dastardly and merciless foes.

You cannot expect English people to be attracted by the brutal intolerances of Nazidom... We certainly do not wish to pursue a policy inimical to the legitimate interests of Germany, but you must surely be aware that when the German Government speaks of friendship with England, what they mean is that we shall give them back their former Colonies, and also agree to their having a free hand so far as we are concerned in Central and Southern Europe. This means that they would devour Austria and Czecho-Slovakia as a preliminary to making a gigantic middle Europe-block. It would certainly not be in our interests to connive at such policies of aggression.

No one ever landed on English soil with more hatred in his heart for a race than I did for the English, and, on this platform, are present English friends who can bear witness to the fact, but the more I lived among them, saw how the machine is working, the English national life, mixed with them, found where the heart-beat of the nation was, the more I loved them. There is none among you here present, my brothers, who loves the English people more than I do. You have to see what is going on there, and you have to mix with them. As the philosophy, our national philosophy of the Vedanta, has summarised all misfortune, all misery from that one cause, ignorance, herein also we must understand that the difficulties that arise between us and the English people are mostly due to that ignorance; we do not know them, they do not know us.

I think the English people are at heart and in practice the kindest people in the world...there is in England a profound sympathy for the under-dog. There is a brotherly and a neighbourly feeling which we see to a remarkable extent through all classes. There is a way of facing misfortunes with a cheerful face. It was shown to a marvellous degree in the war.

It is unnecessary to suppose that any general intermixture either of Roman or of British blood has affected this national identity. Doubtless there were early intermarriages between the invaders and the natives, and probably in the west of England a large and continuous infusion of Celtic blood. But though it may have been locally or relatively great, it could only be in very small proportion to the whole. The language, the personal and local names, the character of the customs and common law of the English, are persistent during historic times. Every infusion of new blood since the first migration has been Teutonic; the Dane, the Norseman, and even the French-speaking Norman of the Conquest, serve to add intensity to the distinctness of the national identity.

The English nation is of distinctly Teutonic or German origin. The Angles, Jutes, and Saxons, who, according to Bede, furnished the mass of immigrants in the fifth century, were amongst those tribes of Lower Germany which had been the least affected by Roman influences... This new race was the main stock of our forefathers: sharing the primeval German pride of purity of extraction, still regarding the family tie as the basis of social organization; migrating in groups of allied and kindred character, and commemorating the tribal identity in the names they gave to their new settlements, honouring the women of their nation, and strictly careful of the distinction between themselves and the tolerated remnant of their predecessor.

The Englishman likes to imagine himself at sea, the German in a forest. It is impossible to express the difference of their national feeling more concisely.

By descent, upbringing and sensibility, Berlin was Russian, Jewish and English. But he misunderstood Russia, Israel and England almost equally. His England was characterised by "toleration...liberty...pluralism and...untidiness" and by a combination of practicality, eccentricity, fair-mindedness, empiricism and common sense. He did not mention the respectability, prejudice, xenophobia, moral conservatism and the low-keyed mistrust of higher thought which are – or perhaps were – also English characteristics.

The English in politics are as the old Hebrews in religion, a favoured and peculiar people.

The English in politics are as the old Hebrews in religion, 'a favored and peculiar people.

After this, who will say that an Englishman ought not to despise “all the nations of Europe?” For my part I do, and that most “heartily.”